Taking normative sense seriously: Ethnography in the light of a utopian referent

Abstract

The paper starts by stating a possible meaning of ethnography within cultural sociology. Then follows an investigation of the ‘normative sense’ in human life that ethnographers not only tend to investigate but also inhabit themselves. The main purpose is to argue that this normative sense needs not necessarily to be shunned, but can be justified as an urgent, conscious, and explicit constituent that enacts theoretically inspired and meaningfully illuminating ethnographic endeavors. This is done by a positive construction and an immanent critique of cultural sociologist Isaac Reed’s work on interpretation and social knowledge, i.e. different forms of epistemic modes, which in this paper is labeled the theoretical, the empirical and the utopian referent, or the pragmatics of grounded re-signification. The paper ends by trying to state the interlaced relationship, or subscription, between these theoretical, empirical and utopian re-significations and the possibility of a thrice-blessed social criticism. Thus, this is what it could mean to take the normative sense seriously.